Daily Archives: August 4, 2009

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdom’s former ambassador to the United States, is reportedly under house arrest over a conspiracy against the monarch.

Saad al-Faqih, head of the opposition group Islamic Reform Movement, told Arab-language TV al-Alam that Prince Bandar has been disappeared and the media has published no word from the ex-diplomat’s whereabouts since nearly three months ago.

According to al-Faqih, the prince first disappeared in Britain but he returned to the kingdom shortly afterwards.

He added that after Saudi officials discovered that he had provoked 200 agents working for the Saudi security service to stage a coup against King Abdullah, he was put under house arrest.

Al-Faqih said people close to the king had disclosed Bandar’s plots and foiled them.

He said Saudi sources believe that intelligence provided by some Arab countries help the Saudi monarch foil Prince Bandar’s conspiracy.

Power struggle between members of the Saudi royal family has been common as power is shared among some 200 princes out of the estimated 7000 family members.

Known as Bandar Bush because of his close relations with former US President George W Bush, the prince is son of Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.

The mysterious death of one of Tajikistan’s best-known public figures is focusing attention on what many consider to be the deteriorating security situation in southeastern Central Asia.

The death of former Emergency Situations Minister Mirzo Ziyoev during a security operation on July 11 came at the end of a week in which armed groups in eastern Tajikistan clashed with police on two separate occasions, giving new life to rumors of armed militants arriving in the country from Afghanistan.

Ziyoev, one of the top military commanders of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) during Tajikistan’s 1992-97 civil war, came from the Islamic wing of the UTO. After the 1997 peace agreement, he was eventually given his ministerial post as part of the power-sharing deal that ended the civil war. The ministry was disbanded in 2006.

Ziyoev had reportedly traveled to Tajikistan’s remote eastern Tavil-Dara area several weeks ago, shortly after reports that another former UTO field commander, Mullo Abdullo, had returned to Tavil-Dara in May with some 100 armed fighters. Abdullo had gone to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban in 2000 but was believed to have been captured and jailed.

Tajik authorities conducted what they said was an antidrug operation in the area shortly after the news of Abdullo’s purported return. Few were fooled as to the operation’s real purpose, however, since the altitude of the region prohibits poppy or cannabis cultivation

Overthrow The Government

Adding to the puzzle was an announcement by Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry on July 11 that Ziyoev had been arrested as part of a security operation in the Tavil-Dara area. The ministry claimed Ziyoev was planning to overthrow the government, was helping to open up a new route for shipping illegal narcotics from Afghanistan through Tajikistan, and had been illegally storing weapons in the Tavil-Dara area.

Hours later, however, Tajik authorities said Ziyoev had been killed while trying to help government forces negotiate with an armed group there.

“During the operation in the Surkhob valley village of Aghba, an illegal group of gunmen suddenly attacked and killed Mirzo Ziyoev,” an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

Tajik authorities say the armed group was made up of fighters from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who allegedly accompanied Abdullo back to Tajikistan. Tavil-Dara was both a base for Islamic fighters of the UTO during the civil war and later served as an IMU base when the militants staged incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the summers of 1999 and 2000.

Someday Return

Central Asia has been relatively quiet since 2001, when U.S. forces delivered crushing attacks on the IMU and Taliban in Afghanistan. But there have been concerns for several years that elements of the IMU who fled to Pakistan’s tribal areas could someday return to Central Asia. And with the Pakistani military stepping up its campaign in its northwestern tribal areas, and U.S. and Afghan forces stepping up their military efforts in Afghanistan, some believe that time may have come.

In late May, unknown assailants set off explosives at an Uzbek border checkpoint, then attacked police in the border town of Khanabad. The armed group then vanished. Later that same day, a suicide bomber killed a policeman in the city of Andijon.

On July 11, Uzbek authorities announced that 10 people had been arrested in connection with the attacks. All those taken into custody were from the area around the town of Khanabad and some, according to Uzbek authorities, had connections in Kazakhstan.

Across the border in Kyrgyzstan, security forces in late June conducted operations against Islamic militants that left at least 11 people dead. Since June 23, Kyrgyz security forces have killed at least nine people they say were IMU fighters. One member of the Kyrgyz security forces and a border guard have also been killed.

Death of prominent Tajik highlights instability in Central Asia’s southeast15.07.2009 09:53Author: Bruce Pannier, RFE/RLThe mysterious death of one of Tajikistan’s best-known public figures is focusing attention on what many consider to be the deteriorating security situation in southeastern Central Asia.

The death of former Emergency Situations Minister Mirzo Ziyoev during a security operation on July 11 came at the end of a week in which armed groups in eastern Tajikistan clashed with police on two separate occasions, giving new life to rumors of armed militants arriving in the country from Afghanistan.

Ziyoev, one of the top military commanders of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) during Tajikistan’s 1992-97 civil war, came from the Islamic wing of the UTO. After the 1997 peace agreement, he was eventually given his ministerial post as part of the power-sharing deal that ended the civil war. The ministry was disbanded in 2006.

Ziyoev had reportedly traveled to Tajikistan’s remote eastern Tavil-Dara area several weeks ago, shortly after reports that another former UTO field commander, Mullo Abdullo, had returned to Tavil-Dara in May with some 100 armed fighters. Abdullo had gone to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban in 2000 but was believed to have been captured and jailed.

Tajik authorities conducted what they said was an antidrug operation in the area shortly after the news of Abdullo’s purported return. Few were fooled as to the operation’s real purpose, however, since the altitude of the region prohibits poppy or cannabis cultivation

Overthrow The Government

Adding to the puzzle was an announcement by Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry on July 11 that Ziyoev had been arrested as part of a security operation in the Tavil-Dara area. The ministry claimed Ziyoev was planning to overthrow the government, was helping to open up a new route for shipping illegal narcotics from Afghanistan through Tajikistan, and had been illegally storing weapons in the Tavil-Dara area.

Hours later, however, Tajik authorities said Ziyoev had been killed while trying to help government forces negotiate with an armed group there.

“During the operation in the Surkhob valley village of Aghba, an illegal group of gunmen suddenly attacked and killed Mirzo Ziyoev,” an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

Tajik authorities say the armed group was made up of fighters from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who allegedly accompanied Abdullo back to Tajikistan. Tavil-Dara was both a base for Islamic fighters of the UTO during the civil war and later served as an IMU base when the militants staged incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the summers of 1999 and 2000.

Someday Return

Central Asia has been relatively quiet since 2001, when U.S. forces delivered crushing attacks on the IMU and Taliban in Afghanistan. But there have been concerns for several years that elements of the IMU who fled to Pakistan’s tribal areas could someday return to Central Asia. And with the Pakistani military stepping up its campaign in its northwestern tribal areas, and U.S. and Afghan forces stepping up their military efforts in Afghanistan, some believe that time may have come.

In late May, unknown assailants set off explosives at an Uzbek border checkpoint, then attacked police in the border town of Khanabad. The armed group then vanished. Later that same day, a suicide bomber killed a policeman in the city of Andijon.

On July 11, Uzbek authorities announced that 10 people had been arrested in connection with the attacks. All those taken into custody were from the area around the town of Khanabad and some, according to Uzbek authorities, had connections in Kazakhstan.

Across the border in Kyrgyzstan, security forces in late June conducted operations against Islamic militants that left at least 11 people dead. Since June 23, Kyrgyz security forces have killed at least nine people they say were IMU fighters. One member of the Kyrgyz security forces and a border guard have also been killed.

(The following is an excerpt from Malignant Masculine Power: The Narcissistic Consciousness of Deceit, Exploitation, Domination, and Destruction that is Leading the World Toward Annihilation, Author: Wanda M. Woodward, MS, Copyright 2007)

Five percent (5%) of the richest Americans own 95% of corporate stocks (Henwood, 1998; 2003). This means that five percent (5%) are reaping excessive and outrageous profits from a forsaking of the American workforce. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Those who are underemployed are being compensated anywhere between 20%-70% less in wages than their prior incomes. Yet, we continue to see very large increases in consumer goods and services from anything as small as vegetables and milk to large ticket items such as cars, homes, and college education expenses. What has occurred over the past three decades in the United States? More skilled jobs that demand higher levels of education and more technical skills have been shipped overseas creating what has been called “the brain drain.” American workers with years of higher level education, greater skills, and more experience are being replaced by either automation or by low income and unemployed foreigners who are glad to work for 1/10 or 1/20 of the pay that an American demands. These leaves mostly semi-skilled and unskilled workers in America such as retail salespeople, waiters and waitresses, health aides, and janitors, all in the lower paying sector (Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994). In addition to this, American corporations have hired part-time workers and independent contractors in order to avoid having to provide healthcare. Yet the executives in the company have very attractive and robust health and welfare benefits. The majority of U.S. part-time workers are women who earn 69% of what males earn. One projection is that, by the year 2014, there will be around 38 million people who will be job hunting in underdeveloped countries (Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994), adding to the already one billion plus people across the world who are unemployed and underemployed (Rifkin, 2004). In a November 2003 study by Alliance Capital Management which reviewed manufacturing jobs in the world’s twenty largest economies, it showed that, between 1995 and 2002, a total of 31 million manufacturing jobs were eliminated due mostly to advanced technology replacing the need for human beings (Rifkin, 2004). One example serves to highlight this. In 2002, Sprint’s productivity rose 15 percent and revenue increased 4.3 percent, yet the company eliminated 11,500 workers from its payroll. Jeremy Rifkin (2004), author of The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, says that, of all the CEOs he has had discussions with, most agreed that intelligent technology, not human beings, will make up the workforce of the future.

In 1995, the rate at which U.S. corporations were eliminating jobs was two million annually. More than 75 percent of workers in most of the industrial nations are performing work that is primarily simple and repetitive (Rifkin, 2004). As of 2003, in the United States, out of 124 million workers, more than 90 million jobs were at risk for replacement by machines. As of the early 1990s, approximately 3.6 billion people (67%) in the world lacked adequate cash or credit to purchase goods and services (Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994). As Barnet and Cavanagh (1994) state: “A huge and increasing proportion of human beings are not needed and will never be needed to make goods or to provide services because too many people in the world are too poor to buy them” (p. 17). With automated machinery and robots taking over, there is the very real possibility of a permanent underclass consisting of hundreds of millions, if not several billion people. Nobel laureate, Wassily Leontief, states that “the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors” (cited in Rifkin, 2004, pp. 5-6). This unprecedented global travesty will create a worldwide situation in which upwards of 80% of the world will be unemployed or underemployed. With several billion people unable to find work, what will prevent society from disintegrating into a state of perpetual lawlessness and chaos? Other ominous predictions regarding robots include the concern that when artificial intelligence is developed, these robots may be given similar rights to humans, including the right to vote.

Japanese Professor Ishiguro has created a human android that is so eerily like a real human being that, one day, the unreal will be indiscernible from a real human being (Whitehouse, 2005). In December 2006, one of 200 studies commissioned by the British government was published which stated, “If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them [robots] including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time” (Henderson, 2007). While it was nay-sayed by most in the scientific community, the fact that it surfaced is alarming. One scientist commented on his concern about who would be responsible if a robot kills or injures someone saying, “We need a proper debate about the safety of the robots that will come onto the market in the next few years. Military use of robots is increasing fast. What we should really be bothered about is public safety.” Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote an article in Wired magazine in 2000 which very clearly elucidates the extreme ethical and moral dangers of technology, and specifically robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology. Perhaps one of the most frightening about all three is that they can self-replicate which, as Joy points out, carries with it great power. In Joy’s article, he talks about the book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, written by Ray Kurzweil, the famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind. In the book, Kurzweil advocates for a utopian world in which human immortality is attained by becoming one with robotic technology. The following frightening scenario is printed in the book:

THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE

First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

Kurzweil had included in his book ideas that Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, had written about a dystopian society. Joy goes on to say that he found Hans Moravec’s book, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, and it gave him more cause for concern. Moravec is a leaders in robotics research as well as the founder of the world’s largest robotics research program at Carnegie Mellon University. In Joy’s (2000) article, he provides an excerpt from Moravec’s book that is similar to Kaczynski’s disturbing vision.

The Short Run (Early 2000s)

Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors. Ten million years ago, South and North America were separated by a sunken Panama isthmus. South America, like Australia today, was populated by marsupial mammals, including pouched equivalents of rats, deers, and tigers. When the isthmus connecting North and South America rose, it took only a few thousand years for the northern placental species, with slightly more effective metabolisms and reproductive and nervous systems, to displace and eliminate almost all the southern marsupials.

In a completely free marketplace, superior robots would surely affect humans as North American placentals affected South American marsupials (and as humans have affected countless species). Robotic industries would compete vigorously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally driving their price beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological humans would be squeezed out of existence.

There is probably some breathing room, because we do not live in a completely free marketplace. Government coerces nonmarket behavior, especially by collecting taxes. Judiciously applied, governmental coercion could support human populations in high style on the fruits of robot labor, perhaps for a long while (Joy, 2000, p. 2).

These excerpts written by men echo the profoundly disturbing, dominating, and destructive quality that is inherent in masculine pathology, particularly in psychopathy in which there is a complete objectification of humankind, and an absence of human compassion and moral conscience. It has eery commonality with the story of Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus published in 1818 by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in which man, egomaniacally obsessed with power and control, creates that which destroys him. This is a psychopath—a man with no heart; essentially, a beast. Joy’s (2000) article is his vocalization of the extremely dangerous and unprecedented potential for extinction that exists as pertains to threats from technology, especially robotics. He emphatically states that “certain knowledge is too dangerous and is best forgone” (p. 11). The reason for his urge for moral caution is best summed up when he states:

By 2030, we are likely to be able to build machines, in quantity, a million times as powerful as the personal computers of today…And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species – to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself…A second dream of robotics is that we will gradually replace ourselves with our robotic technology, achieving near immortality by downloading our consciousnesses…I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals (Joy, 2000, p. 5).

Jacques Attali, French minister and technology consultant to former president Francois Mitterand, declared: “Machines are the new proletariat. The working class is being given its walking papers” (cited in Rifkin, 2004, p. 7). This is one reason for large increases in productivity despite the fact the employees are working harder than ever and putting in longer hours, and even though large numbers of workers have been laid off. With the elimination of layers of traditional management, shortening production processes, and streamlining administrative duties, restructuring and layoffs in corporations can result in a 40% to 75% workforce reduction.

American workers have been left standing at the curbside for decades holding the proverbial bag. They are paying more for the cost of those products and services which the corporation is producing for an estimated 30%-70% less cost due, in large part, to massive savings in the cost of labor as corporations lay off U.S. workers and hire cheap labor from foreign countries at a rate up to 90% of the cost of labor in the U.S. Meanwhile, the compensation of U.S. executives continues to escalate and skyrocket into the tens and hundreds of millions per executive. In addition, this creates a financial windfall for CEOs, senior executives, and the 5% who own stock in these corporations that are saving 60-90% in labor costs. Corporations have betrayed the American workers and have done so without many people being aware of the enormity of the betrayals. Because multi-nationals own virtually all major and mainstream media outlets, they have, for the most part over the past three decades, hid any news that was unfavorable to corporations and the wealthy elite. Hidden from front page or headline news in these mainstream media sources such as CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and Fox News was any news that had the potential to incite large groups of people to unite, engage, and oppose their agenda. The media did not inform the public, to any large degree, about the mass drain of labor out of America that began in the late 1980s. It was not until the early 21st century that large numbers of Americans became aware of the scope of the numbers of lost jobs as well as the fact that the hiring of overseas labor had been occurring for well over a decade. Some of this increased awareness was due to internet access which has non-mainstream sources that provides what many consider are far more accurate pictures and data that are representative of contemporary financial, social, cultural and psychological reality. The wealthiest power brokers have been very aware of the threat that the internet plays in the potential to educate and inform tens and hundreds of millions of people across the world. More crucially, they are cognizant of the potential that this creates for a worldwide organization and uniting of people against what has now become, when combined with overpopulation and global warming, the psychosocial pathology of free market capitalism.

Bio: Wanda Woodward is the author of The Anatomy of the Soul: An Authentic Psychology. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in psychology and her dissertation will be on the theoretical model she developed of gender psychopathology and psychosocial pathology. Upon obtaining her doctorate, she will publish her book, Malignant Masculine Power: The Narcissistic Consciousness of Deceit, Exploitation, Domination, and Destruction That is Leading the World Toward Annihilation which waswritten in 2007 and is an expose of her theoretical model. Her interests are reading, writing, music, philosophy, psychology, and environmental issues.

Nigeria has become an important source of oil and petroleum for China’s rapidly growing economy and Nigeria is looking to China for help in achieving high economic growth; China has provided extensive economic, military and political support.[3][4]

Two countries that may not be entirely happy with Nigeria are the USA and Israel.

As early as the 1970s, Nigeria was supplying more than 50% of Israel’s crude oil in exchange for military hardware. (Cached)

Several top officers in the Nigerian army have had links to Israeli businessmen and security agents. (Cached)

In 2008, in Nigeria, members of the National Assembly expressed concerned about the alleged invitation of Mossad to train Nigeria’s security services under a secret security pact.

I certainly appreciate the outpouring of concern and support. I guess we’ll never know why it was classified by blogger/google as removed.

My take is that it was either to make us all look like fools or the post at Goon Squad and wrh had an effect to get it reinstated or it really was a google glitch and they fixed it after my requests for a review.

Whatever the reason, it still put into focus the fact that I am running out of things to say. I’m repeating myself. It’s the same over and over. We seem to be preaching to the choir, to use an old cliche.

Information is important but action speaks louder than words.

That action is in short supply and as always….I am open for suggestions.

Iran-Contra Operation

Before embarking on its plan for World War III, the Illuminati would first have to end the Cold War, by subduing the Soviet Union, to render America the remaining Western superpower to be pitted against the Muslim World. Therefore, in a Time magazine cover story, published on Jan. 15, 1979, Brzezinski proclaimed Iran, Afghanistan, and the Indian subcontinent as an “arc of crisis” that posed a grave challenge to the West, though one that could also spell doom for the Soviet empire. Essentially, in the Illuminati agenda, the Arc of Crisis was used as a pretext to ignite a band of Islamic fundamentalism across Central Asia, that could be first be used to bankrupt and destroy the Soviet Union, and then to recruit and engage a wave of Islamic fundamentalists to later be used as the specter of terrorism with which to frighten the Western world.

This strategy was revealed in the 1998 interview which Brzezinski gave to the Le Nouvel Observateur:

Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention… We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.[1]

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Chief among these Mujahideen dissidents was CIA asset Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who for their sake postured a radical view of Islam and anti-Americanism. Hekmatyar received a diploma in engineering from Kabul University in 1968. At this time, he showed no sign of religious fundamentalism, though in 1970, he joined the or Muslim Youth, a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nevertheless, he was also a member of the quasi-Marxist PDPA, until he was accused in 1972 of the murdering a Maoist student. He was found guilty and sent to jail for a period of two years. During the Daoud coup of 1973, Hekmatyar escaped to Pakistan, and was recruited by Pakistani intelligence. In Pakistan, Hekmatyar then founded the Hezbi Islami, or Party of Islam, even though he had never received a classical Islamic education.

The US’ move was understood as one that would likely lead to direct Soviet intervention, and that is exactly what happened. On December 24th of that same year, after being invited by the Afghani government, the Russian military took up positions to protect government assets from rebel attacks.

The CIA’s backing of the Mujahideen war in Afghanistan would become its largest covert operation in history, funded by an intricate series of clandestine and illegal activities, known as the Iran-Contra Affair, which involved the complicity of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi regime as well. Essentially, the tremendous wealth created in Saudi Arabia through the orchestration of the Oil Crisis, would act as a slush fund to fund the CIA’s covert operations. When Reagan became president, his administration engaged in an expansion of the relationship already set out with Roosevelt, by which Saudi Arabia would build a massive network of naval and air defense facilities that could sustain U.S. forces, under the pretext that they would be needed to protect the region or wage war against an aggressor. The program also involved a new understanding that Saudi Arabia would become a partner in covert operations, but not just in the Middle East. The Saudis agreed to fund anti-communist guerrillas in Afghanistan, Angola, and elsewhere, who were supported by the Reagan administration, including the Contras of Nicaragua.[2]

Aside from Iran-Contra, when war broke out between Iran and Iraq in 1980, the U.S. secretly backed both sides of the conflict, and also became involved in an operation known as and Iraqgate. The Reagan administration used proceeds from arms sale to Iran to fund the right-wing Contras, in an effort to overturn Nicaragua’s left-wing, but democratically elected, Sandanista government. Both actions were contrary to acts of Congress, which prohibited the funding of the Contras, and the sale of weapons to Iran, which it regarded as a “terrorist state”. In addition, both activities also violated United Nations’ santions.

Throughout this period, until the death of Khomeini in 1989, Iran was the command center of international terrorism, inciting all Muslims, both Sunni and Shiah, to fight the Western countries, which he categorized as “greater and lesser Satans”. At the behest of the Americans, and using the local Shiah communities as intermediaries, Iran had supported and financed a number of “liberation” movements and armed factions, from Palestine to Northern Ireland, to Sudan, and the Ivory Coast.[3]

Prince Bandar

Initially, in order to side-step Congress, the U.S. approached Prince Bandar to solicit Saudi aid in funding the Contras. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the grandson of Ibn Saud, and Hassa bint Ahmed al-Sudairi, one of the most honored and respected women in Saudi Arabia, was appointed Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in 1983, at the age of 34, an appointment he served for twenty years. Prince Bandar has had unprecedented access to Presidents and most senior American officials since the Reagan era. He was a close family friend of the Bushes, named affectionately by Barbara as “Bandar Bush”.

After the Hezbollah bombed American facilities in Beirut, and kidnapped CIA station chief William Buckley, it was CIA chief William Casey and Bandar who agreed to assassinate Sheikh Fadlallah, the terrorist group’s leader. Control of the operation was handed to the Saudis, who turned to the services of an operative from Britain’s elite special forces. The plan backfired, however, when the car bomb took down an apartment building near Beirut, killing eighty innocent civilians. Fadlallah escaped unharmed. Nevertheless, to cover their tracks, the Saudis provided Fadlallah with information identifying the operatives they had hired.[4]

Over time, Saudi aid to the Contras amounted to $32 million. Bandar was also used as an intermediary with Saddam, when he made known his readiness to accept American aid. The U.S. had also been aiding the Iranians, primarily to gain their influence with militant groups that held several American hostages in Lebanon, and who supported bombings in Western European countries. However, the U.S. was also concerned with supporting Saddam, to protect the Saudis and its oil reserves. Though Congress would not have approved, the Reagan administration secretly allowed Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer U.S. weapons, including howitzers, helicopters, and bombs, to Saddam.

Also, part of the proceeds of the weapons sales to Iran had been channelled to finance the Mujahideen:

The Washington Post reported that profits from the Iran arms sales were deposited in one CIA-managed account into which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had placed $250 million apiece. That money was disbursed not only to the contras in Central America but to the rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.[5]

William Casey

The complexities of the Iran-Contra operation, and the arming of the fundamentalist Islamic Mujahideen in Afghanistan, were orchestrated by William Casey, then director of the CIA. Known as “off-the-shelf”, meaning unaccountable and invisible, Casey’s operations involved arms being traded with the Contras for cocaine, and profits from its sale to Black street gangs of Los Angeles, funds from which were then used for the various covert CIA campaigns.

The U.S. government’s involvement in drug-trafficking for the financing of covert activities dates back at least to the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA. A private agreement was settled between Allen Dulles, then Swiss “Station Chief” for the OSS, and later Director of the CIA, and SS General Karl Wolff, against the direct, written orders of President Roosevelt. The SS were granted freedom from prosecution in return for agreeing to secretly work for American intelligence against the Russians in the cold war. However, since it was impossible for the OSS to fund this secret network, Dulles allowed the Nazis to finance themselves from their vast stocks of Morphine, plundered Jewish gold, and a mass of counterfeit British bank-notes.[6]

During the Vietnam War, the CIA, with the assistance of the Hmong hill tribes of Vietnam, were smuggling huge amounts of Heroin from the Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia. Prior to that, the French had controlled the Opium trade in this part of the world, a ring later became known as the “French Connection”. With the embarrassing defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, the French began to withdraw their forces from Indochina, the Americans prevailed over the French, and appropriated the Opium trade, facilitated through the CIA’s Air America network of aircraft.

Richard Armitage

Years after the Vietnam War was over, the CIA remained an important player in the Golden Triangle heroin trade. This fact was corroborated Colonel Bo Gritz, a legend in the Special Forces community, after whom Sylvester Stallone modeled himself in the movie “First Blood”. During 1989, Gritz and two others traveled to the Shanland region of northern Burma, controlled by warlord Khun Sa, who runs the Golden Triangle Opium business. Gritz videotaped a meeting with Khun Sa, in which he revealed that the US government official he dealt with was Richard Armitage, the US Assistant Secretary of Defence. Khun Sa said that Armitage, in turn, used the services of a “traffic manager,” who he named on camera as Santos Trafficante, Florida’s notorious Mafia “Boss”.[7]

Armitage had been a professional assassin in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war, and lead teams similar to the Phoenix program that killed and tortured tens of thousands of Asians. He has been accused of links to illicit gambling, drug smuggling and expansion of organized crime in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East.[8]

As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, Richard Armitage was in charge of coordinating covert military operations, and was in close liaison with Oliver North. Armitage’s deputy and chief anti-terrorist official, Noel Koch, was part of the team set up by Oliver North, in addition to Richard Secord, George Cave, a former CIA station chief in Tehran, and Colin Powell, military assistant to U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

It was William Casey, with the collaboration of Richard Armitage in the Pentagon, who ran the Mujahideen covert war. Stinger missiles, mountain caves equipped as operation centers, military training camps for internationally recruited Islamic combatants, as well as training and recruitment inside the United States, were part of what was funded, using profits from the sale of opium and illicit drugs, funneled through the BCCI, at the behest of the Saudi Arabian government, working closely with the American CIA that used a proxy to cover its involvement, the ISI.

BCCI

Aga Hasan Abedi

From the beginning of the Afghan War, the CIA, partnered with Pakistani Intelligence, in organizing the rebel Mujahideen fighters. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, was established in 1948, by Joseph Cawthorn, a British Intelligence agent of MI6, with whom it has continually maintained close ties. The power of the ISI increased for its first twenty years, until the emergence of Pakistan’s first popularly elected leader, the socialist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1971. Bhutto fell out of favor with the British, and was overthrown by General Zia Ul-Haq, who had been appointed Chief of the Army Staff by Bhutto in 1976, at the insistence of Gulam Jilani Khan, the Director General of the ISI.

In his book, If I Am Assassinated, penned in prison, Bhutto relates how Henry Kissinger threatened him for pushing forward on Pakistan’s nuclear energy program, telling him, “We will make an example of you!”[9] Bhutto was executed in 1978. A spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood boasted, “The Brotherhood has taken over in Iran and Pakistan. Bhutto stood for intrusion of the West into Islam. Bhutto was everything that Pakistan was not. That is why we killed him. And we will use his death as a warning to others.”[10]

Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi

The primary conduit for CIA funds to the Mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan would be the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, BCCI. BCCI, the first Third World multinational bank, which was created in 1972 by Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi, was initially funded by Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi, in anticipation of the petrodollar bonanza of the oil crisis. In The Outlaw Bank, Beatty and Gwynne describe that, “BCCI had been built from oil, from the enormous wealth that flowed into the Middle East after the huge OPEC oil price increases of the 1970s.”[11] Of the coincidence, they further note, “though Abedi could not claim full credit for it, the timing of BCCI’s launch was nothing short of miraculous”[12] , particularly since the American speaker at the 1973 Bilderberg meeting stated that, once oil prices would have increased, “serious problems would be caused by unprecedented foreign exchange accumulations of countries such as Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.”[13]

Bruce Rappapport

One of BCCI’s early moves to gain legitimacy was its purchase in 1976 of 85% of the Banque de Commerce et Placements of Geneva, Switzerland. After taking over the bank, BCCI installed Alfred Hartmann as manager. Hartmann then became the chief financial officer for BCC Holding, and thus one of BCCI’s most influential directors. Hartmann maintained connections with the Rothschilds, being president of Rothschild Bank AG of Zurich. Hartmann was also vice-chairman of NY-InterMaritime Bank of Geneva, run by Mossad operative Bruce Rappaport, who was on the board of N.M. Rothschild and Sons in London.

Though BCCI was created by a Pakistani, it was ultimately a British-based and British-controlled bank. BCCI was initially incorporated in Luxembourg, famous for its lax banking restrictions, and soon branches and holding companies sprouted up around the globe: in the Cayman Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Washington DC and just about everywhere else. However, by 1980, when the BCCI finally applied for and received a license from the Bank of England, there were already more branches in the UK than in any other nation. In fact, one of BCCI’s primary economics advisors was the former British Prime Minister Lord James Callaghan.[14]

“Black funds” for the CIA traveled through BCCI for the Contra war, the Iranian-Israeli payoffs, and large covert wars in Afghanistan and Angola. Casey had wanted to establish an offshore entity capable of conducting covert operations that was “stand-alone”, financially independent, and free from congressional oversight. BCCI was the solution. In the early eighties, Casey began meeting regularly with Abedi in Washington D.C.[15] While he had until then been reticent, some secret deal seems to have been struck with Casey, because Abedi then moved aggressively to establish BCCI in the U.S.[16]

Manuel Noriega

CIA assistant director Robert Gates once referred to BCCI jokingly as the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals.”[17] BCCI became the favored bank for Middle Eastern terrorists, and arms and drug runners, South American drug cartels, organized crime lords, and intelligence services such as the ISI, Mossad, MI6 and the CIA. A branch was set up in Panama, for the cash that Manuel Noriega was funneling out of his country. Noriega, who had been a long-standing U.S. intelligence asset, was also an informant for the Mossad. He had undergone military and intelligence training in Israel, and-like Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin, wore his Israeli paratrooper wings on his uniform for years afterward. On one of his visits to Israel, in the 1980s, Noriega bought a seaside villa in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya. Back in Panama, he sent his children to the Jewish community’s prestigious Alberto Einstein day school, and even to an Israeli kibbutz one summer.[18]

Noriega’s mentor was Michael Harari, a Mossad intelligence agent. When Harari finished directing Mossad death squads against the PLO in the early 1970s, he was transferred to Central and South America. Harari supervised what became known as the Harari Network, set up in 1982 by the Reagan administration and the Israeli government, to run a secret aid program for the Nicaraguan contras. Operating out of Mexico, Panama, and Florida, the network integrated his operations with the emerging cocaine trade, particularly those of Colombia’s Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels, and shipped guns to the Contras and smuggled cocaine from Colombia to the US via Panama.[19] It was the CIA that had set up the meetings in which various Colombian drug dealers organized into a drug trafficking Medellin cartel in 1981, permitting it to deal with a group rather than many independent drug dealers.[20]

In his book, Defrauding America: Encyclopedia of Secret Operations by the CIA, DEA and Other Covert Agencies, Rodney Stich reports a conversation recorded by one of his informants, Gene “Chip” Tatum, a helicopter pilot for the US Army and the CIA, where Harari explained:

What we do has nothing to do with preserving a country’s integrity. It’s just business and third world countries see their destiny as defeating borders and expanding. The more of this mentality we can produce, the greater our wealth. We train and we arm: that’s our job. And in return we get a product far more valuable than the money for a gun. We’re paid with product and we credit top dollar for product [i.e., drugs]. Look, one gun and 3,000 rounds of ammo is $1,200. A kilo of product [cocaine] is about $1,000. We credit the Contras $1,500 for every kilo. That’s top dollar for a kilo of cocaine. It’s equivalent to the American K-Mart special: buy four, get one free. On our side we spend $1,200 for a kilo and sell it for $12,000 to $15,000. Now that’s a profit center. And the market is much greater for the product than for weapons. It’s just good business sense. Understand?[21]

The more conventional departments of BCCI handled such services as laundering money for the drug trade and helping dictators loot their national treasuries. BCCI also operated a clandestine division of the bank called the “black network”, which functioned as a global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad. The black network used sophisticated spy equipment and techniques, along with bribery, extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, and even, by some accounts, assassination. The black network operated a lucrative arms-trade business and transported drugs and gold. According to an international arms dealer, who frequently worked with the black network:

B.C.C.I. was a full-service bank. They not only financed arms deals that one government or another wanted to keep secret, they shipped the goods in their own ships, insured them with their own agency and provided manpower and security. They worked with intelligence agencies from all the Western countries and did a lot of business with East bloc countries.[22]

It is evident the BCCI’s black network is an appendage of an original Illuminati body. To understand how so-called “Islamic terrorists” are deceptively recruited, it is revealing to consider an account reported by Beatty and Gwynne through their source, a Palestinian named Sami Masri, who had defected from the Pakistani branch of the operation:

They recruited me in 1984 when I was going to college in Pittsburgh… They called me on the phone, they knew me from home, they knew a lot about me, and it was easy to relate to them. When they showed up, they were just normal people, very humble, down to earth…

They were young white people, Persians, Armenians out of Jordan, Pakistanis living in the Emirates. They all spoke Arabic, most of them with a Palestinian accent.

It was all very friendly at the beginning. They gave me money, there were parties and women, and then they began to explain the power and connections they had and suggested that I join their organization. They told me I would learn later what the orgnization was really about. They were always there for you and they just sort of took control of everything. They taught me about leadership, gave me books to read ­ books on how to deal with people, on psychology. They talked about not showing your emotions. They were always saying “That’s what a leader does, and you should behave like a leader.

In 1985 I got my first operation: there were six people, and I was in charge; I had instructions, support, cash. We went out of Karachi to Bangladesh and then to India. We had documents, passports, and we flew to England. People were waiting for us there. They picked up the stuff and gave us new passports and travel documents. I got paid $50,000 and the others got $10,000 each. I found out later that this first operation was an easy one; it was meant to go like clockwork to give us confidence. We got into the really heavy things later….

All of a sudden they started talking to us differently; it was almost like boot camp. It wasn’t friendly anymore. We trained with arms, and there was other special training: breaking and entering, setting up bugs, and eavesdrop devices….

We were acting as couriers, delivering documents and gathering military and industrial information… government secrets. I was sent to interrogate people ­ people that were targeted. We would learn everything about them; we would do that ourselves or hire detective agencies. At times when there were people we wanted to recruit, or people who had information that we wanted, we would put hundreds of thousands of dollars in their bank accounts before we talked to them…

It is a very good technique if you can afford it, and we had unlimited money. If you look at your bank account and see that you have a million dollars that you didn’t think you had… it is much harder to return that money then it is to turn it down in the first place. And in some circumstances, you are already compromised just because the money is in your account and you can’t explain it….

[Those targeted were…] People we wanted to work with us. Generals, politicians, government officials, bank officers, it was in all countries…

We trained together [with the Mossad] in Karachi for covert operations. We gathered information for the Mossad, spying on the Gulf States because we were so close to the ruling families there that we were familiar with the foreign policies. The Israelis sold U.S. arms, technology, expertise to Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and BCCI brokered the deals…

[BCCI] gave the Mossad, Israel, the use of their agents in the Emirates. BCCI was friends with everybody…

We did joint operations; BCCI was financing Israeli arms going into Afghanistan. There were Israeli arms, Israeli planes, and CIA pilots.[23]

Clark Clifford

Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Kamal Adham, director of Saudi intelligence between 1963 and 79, brother-in-law of King Faisal, and the CIA’s key liaison in the Arab world during the 1980’s, secretly acted as BCCI nominees in a hostile take-over of Washington D.C.’s largest bank, Financial General Bankshares, that soon became First American Bankshares. From BCCI’s initial attempts to acquire First American, in 1978, until his forced resignation in 1991, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, from his position as the top official at the bank, was one of the central figures in BCCI’s acquisitions and management of American banks. Clark Clifford, who had been Washington’s preeminent attorney, was referred to by the Financial Times as “the ultimate insider”. According to Gwynne and Beatty, Clifford “was without doubt one of the most remarkable personalities ever to navigate the treacherous currents of national politics.”[24]

Sheikh Kamal Adham

Clifford became special counsel to the president in 1946, and assisted in the formulation of the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the United States would support “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Clifford was instrumental in persuading Truman to recognize the nation of Israel. Clifford was also co-author of the National Security Act of 1947, which set up both the CIA and NSC, and was important in the creation of the Department of Defense.

In 1950, Clifford left politics and became the first Washington lawyer to earn a million-dollar income. He was John F. Kennedy’s attorney while he was still a senator, and continued to offer his advice during his campaign and presidency. Clifford returned to government in 1968 as Lyndon B. Johnson’ secretary of defense, where he advised the president to end the war in Vietnam. His advice was also sought by Pres. Carter, who consulted Clifford regarding difficulties involving his budget director, Burt Lance.

Burt Lance

It was precisely his reputation and connections that led the Arab front men for BCCI to seek Clifford’s help in acquiring an American bank. The Federal Reserve Board approved the takeover in 1981, reassured by Clifford that there would be no control by BCCI, which he also represented. Ten years later, Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney in New York City, found evidence that the parent company of Clifford’s bank was in fact secretly controlled by BCCI. The D.A. convened a grand jury to determine whether Clifford and his partner, Altman, had deliberately misled federal regulators.

Clifford’s predicament worsened when it was disclosed that he had made about six million dollars in profits from bank stock that he bought with an unsecured loan from BCCI. A New York grand jury handed up indictments, as did the Justice Department. Clifford’s assets in New York, where he kept most of his investments, were frozen. Clifford said the investigation caused him pain and anger. If the regulators had been deceived about any secret ownership by BCCI, he said, he too had been deceived.

Mena, Arkansas

BCCI’s First American was set up in the U.S. with the assistance of Jackson Stephens, of Little Rock, Arkansas, the former operational headquarters of Albert Pike. The Stephens Group, a multibillion-dollar empire of companies, which is operated by Jackson Stephens and his family, dominates the Arkansas economy, where they own a large part of more than a dozen banks, the most exclusive hotel in Little Rock, and the building that houses Bill Clinton’s Arkansas office. Stephens is named in the court records as having brought Saudi billionaire Ghaith Pharaon, of BCCI, together with Stephens’ close friend Bert Lance, who had been a cabinet official under President Jimmy Carter. However, Stephens, and Lance, like Clark Clifford, all maintain they did not know the group of investors headed by Pharaon, were actually fronting for BCCI.

Bill and Hilary Clinton

Clinton’s staff has also refused to comment on the series of connections.[25] Stephens played a part in the CIA-supervised cocaine smuggling operation based in Mena, Arkansas, during Bill Clinton’s term as governor in the 80s. Mena was a key CIA trans-shipment point for the Iran-Contra operation.[26] One estimate suggests that Barry Seal, who also worked for the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration, ran as much as a hundred million worth of cocaine a month through Mena.[27] It was Barry Seal’s plane crashing in Nicaragua that exposed the Iran-Contra affair. Nevertheless, CBS News correspondent Bill Plante complained there is a trail of “tens of millions of dollars in cocaine profits [from Mena], and we don’t know where it leads. It is a trail that has been blocked by the National Security Council.”[28]

Jackson Stephens

One important business in the Arkansas narcotics network was Park-on-Meter, or POM Inc. Commercially, POM was to produce parking meters and machine parts. Covertly, it was manufacturing untraceable custom weapons parts for the Contras, and shipping them to Mena. POM had subcontracted the job from a CIA front, called Iver Johnson’s Firearms, of Jacksonville, Arkansas. Former CIA scientist, Michael Riconosciuto, is one of the original architects of the backdoor to PROMIS, a people-tracking software system sold to intelligence organizations and government drug agencies worldwide, originally part of a U.S. plot to spy on other spy agencies. Riconosciuto has told reporters that he was closely involved in these covert operations, and claims that he supervised high-tech equipment transfers to POM, and had developed software to help launder the Mena drug money.[29]

Park-On-Meter was the first company to receive a loan from the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), created by the Arkansas state legislature at Clinton’s urging in 1985. Its ostensible purpose was to attract capital to the state, for the purpose of economic development, by offering companies long-term loans financed through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. ADFA, however, had no regulator and no legislative oversight. The governor could appoint the board and had the right to approve or disapprove every bond issue.

Webb Hubbell

POM president and co-owner Seth Ward’s brother-in-law, Webster “Webb” Hubbell, who served on POM’s board during the early 80s, co-wrote the documents which created the ADFA in 1985. Later Webb Hubbell would become a partner in the Rose Law Firm, which employed Hillary Clinton, and which eventually was at the center of the Whitewater scandal. Hillary Clinton, representing the Rose Law Firm, had also successfully defended Systematics, a subsidiary of Stephens Inc, during Stephen’s and Adham’s hostile takeover of Financial General. Clinton appointed Hubbell as the Associate Attorney General, the number-three position in the Justice Department, but he later resigned under questions about his role in Whitewater, and a question about the million dollars owned by POM to the Rose firm, not only shielding him from other accusations related to Whitewater, but also serving to get POM out of the headlines.

The names of Hubbell and the Rose law firm appear on the bond issues and loan agreements for the largest contributions to Clinton’s presidential campaign. The banks, which extended several loans of more than three million, were all owned by a company named Stephens Inc., which was also a primary underwriter of ADFA bonds. In 1992, Stephen’s Worthen Bank of Little Rock, Arkansas, made a timely, and much needed, two million dollar loan to the primary campaign of the then future president, Bill Clinton.[30]

Part of Stephens’ laundering worked through front companies set up by bond broker Dan Lasater, of Lasater & Company, the principle bond underwriter for the ADFA. Lasater had first made his fortune founding Ponderosa, a steakhouse chain that went public in 1971, and then moved to Little Rock. He had close ties with Bill Clinton, through his friendship with Clinton’s mother and half-brother, Roger. In 1982 he was one of the biggest contributors to Clinton’s election campaign, when he won back the governorship after a term out of office. Terry Reed alleges in court documents, and in his recent book, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, that Barry Seal made deposits of cash from the Mena drug operation directly to Lasater & Co. Reed also says that Lasater introduced Seal to him once as a client of his, although Lasater’s attorney denies the charge.

The Mujahideen

Lord Nichols Bethell

John Train

Ultimately, the primary purpose of the BCCI, and the reason behind its meteoric rise, was its connection to the ISI, and the Mujahideen fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After Zia replaced Bhutto as Pakistan’s president, he appointed his friend Fazle Haq to be the governor of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province in 1978. This is the area that borders Afghanistan, through which tons of drugs and weapons were smuggled over the Khyber Pass. Fazle Haq was an important friend and backer of BCCI’s founder Hasan Abedi, and the BCCI was used to launder untold millions of ISI narcotics revenues.[31]

Under National Security Directive 3, signed by President Reagan in 1982, Vice President George Bush was placed in charge of the entire global covert action program. It was Bush’s Special Situation Group (SSG), and Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG), at the White House, that employed Oliver North, Richard Secord, “Public Diplomacy” head Walter Raymond, and the entire Iran-Contra operators. Throughout the 1980s, the Afghan War was the largest single program under this Bush chain of command.[32]

As indicated by a series of articles in the Octover 13, 1995 isse of the Executive Intelligence Review, titled “the Anglo-American support apparatus behind the Afghani mujahideen”, the City of London also played a leading role in promoting the Afghan “Jihad”. Following the Soviet invasion, Lord Nicholas Bethell, a career British Intelligence agent, and close friend of British double agent Kim Philby, formed Radio Free Kabul, as a voice for the Mujahideen. Other members included Winston Churchill III, former Foreign Secretary Baron Chalfont, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, the former head of the Foreign Office, and British Intelligence official Ray Whitney.

In 1981, Lord Bethell accompanied Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a tour of the U.S. to drum up support for the resistance, leading to the creation of the Committee for a Free Afghanistan (CFA). The CFA’s funding came largely from the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, which is part of the Tavistock Institute network, directed by British Intelligence.[33] The list of CFA’s Council of Advisers included Gen. John Singlaub, the former president of World Anti-Communist League, who was deeply involved in various Iran-Contra operations; former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency head Gen. Daniel Graham; former Reagan-Bush administration National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen. Other members of its advisory council included Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, whose cousin Alexander de Marenches was then running French intelligence; and two known CIA operatives, Louis Dupree and Thomas Goutierre.[34]

Another British creation was the Afghan Relief Committee (ARC) was established in 1980 by Wall Street investment banker and spy John Train. From its inception, the ARC worked closely with Freedom House, chaired by Leo Cherne, and whichh was has also included among its board of trustees, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations. Founders of the ARC also included four former U.S. ambassadors to Afghanistan: Francis L. Kellogg, a decades-long associate of Train; Train’s cousin. Sen. Claiborne Pell; and again Louis Dupree and Thomas Gouttierre. Neo-conservative Jeane Kirkpatrick, later the Reagan administration ambassador to the U.N., also of Freedom House, was co-chairman of the group. Among the main known financial beneficiaries of the group were Doctors Without Borders.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

Also operative were Leo Cherne’s International Rescue Committee (IRC); the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); and the State Department’s Agency for International Development. CIA director William Casey was on the IRC’s board of directors, and had served as its president at one time. Leo Cherne was then vice-director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), with offices at the White House.

Deeply involved in providing safe haven for the Afghan Mujahideen, and facilitating their dispersal throughout the world, was Ismaili Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the second son of the hereditary Imam of the Ismailis. In the 50s, Prince Sadruddin had become publisher of the Paris Review, an important British intelligence operation at the time, which was active promoting the Children of the Sun, the Dionysian cult, comprised of the children of Britain’s Roundtable elites. John Train, who was then the managing editor of the publication, had been Prince Sadruddin’s roommate at Harvard.

Prince Sadruddin was made coordinator of the U.N. Humanitarian and Economic Assistance Programs for Afghanistan, working with John Train, in what was code-named Operation Salam, which was officially intended to organize the repatriation of Afghan refugees after the Soviet withdrawal. Prince Sadruddin’s program also reportedly was involved in the military training and covert military supply of the Mujahideen, who often operated out of U.N. refugee camps that he administered on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.[35]

Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan

Prince Sadruddin has also been a key figure in Prince Philip’s World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which, according to the EIR, is “the British royal family’s most important intelligence agency”.[36] Since its creation in 1961, Prince Sadruddin has been one of is primary funders, as has his nephew, the current leader of the Ismailis. Through his London-based Aga Khan Foundation, and the Geneva-based Bellerive Foundation, he has emerged as a top figure in the environmental movement.

In 1983, the WWF successfully persuaded the Pakistani government to create two national parks directly on the Afghan border, renowned for the quality and abundance of its opium poppy, which was assiduously cultivated by the Mujahideen. It was also a primary staging area for smuggling arms into Afghanistan.

Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was channelled to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. According to Alfred McCoy, however, within two years of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, border between Pakistan and Afghanistan became the world’s top heroin producer, supplying sixty percent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979, to 1.2 million by 1985, a much steeper rise than in any other nation. CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade, but once the heroin left Pakistan’s laboratories, the Sicilian mafia managed its export to the U.S., which it distributed to street gangs through a chain of pizza parlors, according to the DEA.[37]

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was leading recipient of CIA funding among the Mujahideen groups, and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, was at the center of the drug trade laundered through BCCI to fund the Mujahideen campaign. According to journalist Tim Weiner, “[Hekmatyar’s] followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department officials I have spoken with call him “scary,” “vicious,” “a fascist,” “definite dictatorship material.”[38] Over time it has emerged that Hekmatyar was not only an ISI asset, who laundered his money through BCCI, but that he also cooperated with the KGB to ensure his status as the most powerful warlord among many rivals. Human rights groups alleged that he was responsible for murdering more Afghans than the Soviet Union killed.

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